"Oh, my other bag, my bag of epithets, of polysyllabic epithets!" cried the fugitive as he ran.
A squealing pig joined the chase, and the men children and maid children who ran after laughed aloud. The women who watched from lattice or stone doorstep were of those who, by means of ten skillfully selected adjectives from the rose-colored bag, and a dozen golden epithets from the bag of yellow, had been made to gape and quiver with the sense of the birth of new truth, yet they failed to recognize the juggler, for iridescent mist and ruddy vapor had vanished from his head and shoulders, and they saw naught save a lean and ugly man fleeing under a gray sky; and, hearing, they yet did not understand his cry of deep dismay.
"Oh, my exclamation points, my lost exclamation points! Oh, my pet hiatus that laid all low when nothing else would avail!"—and so he passed out of their sight, and out of the city of Marmorante.
At the sign of the Red Dragon that afternoon, young merchant Hugh was closely locked in his room. Behind great iron bolts he sat upon a three-legged stool, and worked with the colored, rattling bags.
"'Tis well that men have devised this thing," he said, holding a mirror before his face, as he sucked air from the bag of rose; "else could I not see if all goes well." And his heart was well-nigh bursting with joy when he saw that the breath of his mouth was even as the breath of the Necromancer upon the air. Then he slipped downstairs and begged for a cup of ale, and as the maid served him in the kitchen, he blew out a whiff from the bag of gold, and of a sudden her face became as the faces of the women who stood in the market-place under the spell of the juggler, and Hugh was glad.
The next day he hid the bags in a neckerchief of fine silk, and went to the house of his sweetheart, asking to see her; but when she came, it was with a face set and cold, and she paused with the great oaken table between them.
"Hugh," she said, unsmiling, "I have been thinking."
"'Tis foolish work for a woman," he answered stoutly.
"That which thou dost say but confirms my thought," she answered, still more coldly. "We cannot be wed; waking and sleeping have I considered this matter, and thus have I resolved."
"Now, why?" cried honest Hugh bluntly.